- POOR SALARY ADMINISTRATION
As recent as 2006, we still find some denominations paying monthly salary as low as N5,000 ($20) to their full time ministers.
The pastors are owed up to ten months salary. Even the pittances are paid in instalments.
We were informed of a particular long standing indigenous denomination in Nigeria that still pays their full time pastors about N2,500 (two thousand five hundred naira) or ($7) monthly.
The boards' posture say it all: “After all, it is God that called the pastor,” “Only God can pay anyone”. “We all serve God, yet we are not all paid”.
- ARBITRARY SALARY ADMINISTRATION, ESPECIALLY BY INTER-DENOMINATION CHURCHES.
Several churches, particularly denominational churches and independent ministries, don't have any standard for setting and determining the salaries of their ministers.
The church board simply assigns an arbitrary salary to a pastor, with little or no regard to experience, training and other critical factors. This results in irregular salary evaluation. Several pastors often go on for years without promotion or much increase. We have many university graduates as clergies today, who earn the salary of school certificate holders, when compared with the secular employment.
- LACK OF FINANCIAL EDUCATION.
Our interaction with pastors 'reveal that about 70% of them don't have any from of savings at all.
I encountered a Pastor who presided over a church for nine years without any bank account opened for the church.
He also inherited the church from another pastor. The church was about nineteen (19) years old.
It' is still in the process of opening accounts. Less than 10 percent of pastors are into any form of investment.
I regularly conduct pastor’s seminars from my 7th Book, FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE IN LIFE AND MINISTRY. I have discovered that most pastors consider any form of Financial Education as being too secular and not for servants of God.
A senior pastor said to my hearing, “I don't believe in savings. I don't patronize shares. I don't want to keep my money for the anti-Christ”. “I would rather invest in the kingdom than earthly investment ”.
They are very poor, serving the Lord!
- PASTORS THAT SHOULD BE TENTMAKERS ARE INTO FULL-TIME MINISTRY.
Some Pastors in the full-time ministry today did not get their bearings right. I have been into full-time ministry, by the grace of God, since October 10, 2001.
I heard God instructed me to “abandon all else and be on His payroll"
I was a busy Management Consultant at that time, with my clientele from 'the private sector and blue chip companies.
Prior to this time, I was a tentmaker for seven years, since my call to the ministry in September 1994. I took my time to ask God ‘for the meaning of being on “HIS payroll” It meant He would provide for all my needs.
I would live by my ministry. I would not 'need a salary from any church as a pastor. This has been my terms of assignment since 2001.
I am pursuing the ministry full-time, without charge or salary. Moreover, my wife was fully briefed on this change, and she has been in full support.
HOW DO I KNOW IF I SHOULD BE A TENTMAKER OR ENTER FULL-TIME MINISTRY?
- Specific instruction from God. It is not enough to have graduated from a seminary to go full-time.
- Grow your ministry to the extent that you can be sustained.
Until you can be sustained by your ministry, you should still continue as a tentmaker. - Understand the phase of your ministry.
Until your hand is “full-time ministry work” you have no business in “full-time ministry”
- MANY PASTORS GO INTO FULL-TIME MINISTRY BEFORE GOD'S APPOINTED TIME.
Ecc. 3:1 “To everything there is season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
Ministry is in phases, every minister has his time.
An understanding of God's time schedule for every phase puts you in the center of God's program. Every calling of God has an appointed takeoff time. Heb. 2:3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie, though it tarries, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry."
Missing God’s timing may jeopardize your life. Jesus waited in the carpenter’s shed for 30 years before stepping out. Several are premature full-time ministers; they are not entitled to full-time salaries yet.
- MANY PASTORS HAVE NO FINANCIAL PLANS FOR THEIR LIVES, FAMILIES AND MINISTRIES.
Gen. 30:30 And now, when shall I provide for mine own house also ”.
Some ministers never plant their own trees of wealth. They eat whatever comes to their hands. Pastors believe that their financial future is exclusively in the hands of the Lord who called them. They spend all their time on the mountains and never sit down to plan. Praying without planning, is playing without knowing. Many have prayed until they become preys. God is not opposed to planning.
Jesus surely was an astute planner. He counselled His disciples in
Luke 14:28 For which of you, intending to build a tower; sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it.
- Follow a 10 - 10 - 10 - 70 financial plans. 10% of your income goes for tithe.
Next 10% goes for other forms of giving. 10% is for personal saving for investment. Spend the remaining 70% for your life expenses. Intercession minus calculation, will always lead to frustration. Whereas, intercession plus calculation will always lead to manifestation.
- SOME MINISTERS HAVE MORE CHILDREN THAN THEIR FINANCIAL CAPACITY
Child spacing and family planning should not be limited to church members. Ministers of God should cut their coat according to their material, not their desire, when it comes to child bearing and raising children.
- MOST MINISTERS ARE HEAVENLY MINDED AND EARTHLY USELESS
- SOME MINISTERS ARE NOT WORKING AT THEIR PLACES OF ASSIGNMENT
Some ministers never bother to ask the owner of the work for their specific places of assignment. Man of God, the right people are waiting for you at the right place of your assignment. When you are at the right place, the right people move towards you. You need to find out if God has sent you in the first place.
Even if God has sent you, are you doing things as commanded? Lamentations 3:37 who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commanedeth it not?
- MINISTERS THAT EVADE TITHING AND SACRIFICIAL GIVING
Tithing is a non-negotiable obligation for a minister that will prosper.
This missing link is the reason for perpetual struggling in the ministry. Not paying tithe puts a pastor under closed heaven.
- It makes the work of God a burden, and not a delight.
- It converts the pleasures of ministry to pressures of misery.
- It takes a tithing pastor to have a tithing church (Hosea 4:9).
- Personal tithing is a pastor's access to supernatural prosperity.
Rev. Albert O. Aina
Chief Executive Officer, Christian Leadership Skills Inc. Senior Pastor, Saabo Foursquare Gospel Church. 08023010696; www.christianleadershipskills.com